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Why can these threads never stay on topic? We've had a more than enough systemd vs upstart threads, how about talking about the voting? Things have gotten interesting with Ian Jackson, the leader of the upstart faction, voting 54231. That's right, he put systemd in last place specifically to block it, not for technical reasons. More info here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte.../msg00441.html

That is tactical voting indeed. It is hard to believe that his ranking is sincere and that he thinks that sysvinit is better than even Upstart.

His tantrum and counter proposals suggest that he fears the battle for Upstart as default for Linux is lost, and that therefore forcing Debian to maintain multiple init systems may the be the wedge to mandate Debian maintainers to maintain Upstart scripts, even if systemd is default. It sure will be easier for Canonical to have the many DD's work for them.

As I understand the Debian voting rules, the CTTE memebers may change their vote later, and I predict he does when he sees what the other members vote.

Comment

Maybe, maybe not. If I understand it correctly, OpenRC is the one who moves the least from sysvinit, so it still could be that he considers systemd to be too broad to actually be good. That's just a possible, at least partially technical reason I can come up with, without digging too deep in the matter. Of course, it could still be just politics, I don't discard it, I just don't feel we should be completely sure about it. Give the guy the benefit of doubt.

Not only that, his statement that I linked to is political.

I'm not arguing that, but his statement is also not toward what he voted, but to the vote itself.

As far as the "off topic" question, we have numerous threads about the systemd vs upstart debate, my point is that every thread even remotely related seems to rehash it again and again.

Yes, but if you discard the trolling (which will happen in specific threads anyway), all of them bring new approaches to the discussion. Also, not all of us lurk really deep in the forums. I usually come only to the news related threads.

Also thread derailment can result in some very interesting discussions, just... it has to be derailed by the right kinds of people... not people like "Truth", "Honton", or "BSDSUCKSDICKS"

Well, that's true, but eventually people who actually want to discuss tend to involve in the discussion. I admit, though, most people have serious problems ignoring obvious trolls like Truth, and this leads to several pages of "no, you are an idiot" posts. I really can't remember if Honton and BSDSUCKSDICKS are that much trolls or only die hard fans, I haven't seen their posts in a long time, but Truth is just too evident to justify any answer, it's even worse than BO$$.

Wow, Ian Jackson is acting really hostile. Not about his vote, but about the overall attitude, accusing Bdale of starting a vote without exhaustive discussion on what the vote text is supposed to be (time Debian most likely doesn't have, they need a decision and they need it fast). His proposed additions are minor, and yet he's calling a revote, and is also addressing people who have already voted to revoke their votes (instead of just asking if they want to revote under the slightly changed text, or just to continue voting noting that there are minor things not mentioned in the first post). I find his attitude to be really quite offensive.

As for his vote, yes, he explicitly stated he is voting for political reasons (but his intention, or at least pretext, is to stop the voting entirely). Also, he put upstart at the third, not first or second, place, which means that his vote won't impact systemd as much as it could.

I agree on his hostility, but I didn't see anything in the mail that lead to think he's against systemd for political or maybe philosophical reasons, only against the vote.
On having to decide fast, I kind of agree, but not really. I think rushing decisions is what tends to ruin projects, or at least makes them look bad. The decision Debian needs to make fast is what will be in the next release, and IMO it's as simple as "we couldn't decide, so status quo is the obvious choice". I'm all for adopting systemd, but migrating init systems is a fairly big amount of work (and if someone comes with the backwards compatibility, I'd ask what you changed the init system for if you use it mostly for their compatibility with what you already had; this compatibility is not a solution, is a tool to make migration more gradual and nothing else), so a decision in this should be final, not something you could regret and change for the next release. And a final decision should never be rushed.

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Regardless of how the TC votes, I think it is likely that there will be a GR on the issue (particularly since the TC has agreed in principle to allow for a simple majority to overrule the vote), because there isn't a single choice that will sit well with all Debian developers. If it would keep the TC from going into full-on meltdown mode, perhaps Debian should just skip straight to a GR (despite arguments against doing this in the first place). At least the whining can be marginalized once a GR has passed, and hopefully the bulk of the bad blood, misrepresentations, and FUD will have been exhausted by then. It really doesn't need to be this melodramatic.

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I'm not arguing that, but his statement is also not toward what he voted, but to the vote itself.

But that means that not only is his vote political (for the Ubuntu cause, not Debian), he is also insincere in his voting. He is on a technical committee, elected to vote on technical issues. If he disagree with the voting agenda, he should argue with his colleagues, not abusing the voting system by making insincere votes.

His strategy seems now to be make sysvinit the default init system in Linux, a solutions so technically bad, that it will be easy to persuade people afterwards, that multiple init system is mandatory for the Debian maintainers to maintain, among these Upstart. That way he can make Debian work towards Canonical goals.

Don Armstrong has just voted sysvinit as the primary init system (5 4 3 2 1), again putting systemd last, so they seem to have communicated beforehand.

Comment

I agree on his hostility, but I didn't see anything in the mail that lead to think he's against systemd for political or maybe philosophical reasons, only against the vote.
On having to decide fast, I kind of agree, but not really. I think rushing decisions is what tends to ruin projects, or at least makes them look bad. The decision Debian needs to make fast is what will be in the next release, and IMO it's as simple as "we couldn't decide, so status quo is the obvious choice". I'm all for adopting systemd, but migrating init systems is a fairly big amount of work (and if someone comes with the backwards compatibility, I'd ask what you changed the init system for if you use it mostly for their compatibility with what you already had; this compatibility is not a solution, is a tool to make migration more gradual and nothing else), so a decision in this should be final, not something you could regret and change for the next release. And a final decision should never be rushed.

I didn't say he said he voted against systemd for political reasons specifically; I said he said his vote was for political reasons, and it is. He emphasised the voting rules, yes, but he didn't explicitly state that he didn't vote the last place for systemd for political reasons, either. If the first part of the vote is political, he might as well have made the rest political as well (putting systemd at the last place does make it more likely to get sysvinit AKA status quo).

And as far as I can tell, most people in the TC feel that staying with sysvinit is the worst thing that could happen. It's inadequate, and the later they start moving, the longer the transition period will go, and the longer people will have to suffer with init scripts. So delaying a decision and hoping it defaults to sysvinit staying reminds me of the US financial situation ? both sides can't agree with each other, and thus the outcome is what both sides wanted the least. And that's just bad for everyone involved.

About the finality of the decision, well, from what I gathered, most TC members have already decided and I don't see anything changing their decisions. So delaying the vote is rather pointless, as they already investigated the options well enough; it's not rushing, because this question has been raised a while ago. Plus this decision can be overruled in any case. But it will be a basis they can finally agree on, and thus move on to more productive things, like planning the actual transition.

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And as far as I can tell, most people in the TC feel that staying with sysvinit is the worst thing that could happen. [snip]

Nevertheless two CTTE members have now ranked sysvinit as their main choice suggesting some sort of collusion and extreme tactical voting, and I therefore suggest even the Upstart maintainer will rank sysvinit higher than Upstart.

Having sysvinit as default initsystem for Debian Linux is of course really, really bad for Debian. But it may be a clear benefit for Canonical, in that this will almost force Debian to support multiple init systems because the default is so bad. That way Upstart is likely to be mandatory supported by Debian maintainers as a secondary initsystem, a clear boon for Canonical.

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Not to mention they break UNIX principles at whim and seem to be proud of that.

you realize that Debian is Linux =! Unix ...
thank god
all those principles ... in germany we say "prinzipipenreiter" to people who say that they want something just because the principle exists. The good thing for those people is, that they don?t have to think if the principle makes sense in a given situation...

Comment

Regardless of how the TC votes, I think it is likely that there will be a GR on the issue (particularly since the TC has agreed in principle to allow for a simple majority to overrule the vote), because there isn't a single choice that will sit well with all Debian developers. If it would keep the TC from going into full-on meltdown mode, perhaps Debian should just skip straight to a GR (despite arguments against doing this in the first place). At least the whining can be marginalized once a GR has passed, and hopefully the bulk of the bad blood, misrepresentations, and FUD will have been exhausted by then. It really doesn't need to be this melodramatic.

Yea, given that the TC is largely deadlocked, a GR will be needed in any case, and if they allow a majority overrule, then there is little point in the vote...

On mass votes for technical decisions, I always feel that some sort of balancing is needed (be it this case or referendums in general). There are people who have really studied the topic a whole lot, and then there are impressionable people who vote just for the heck of it or out of ignorance. It doesn't seem fair that their votes count equally... If people were forced to read through pros and cons of each option before being allowed to vote, that would ward off most of the latter. Or allow everyone to vote, but give more weight to people who read through the text (perhaps have a mini questionnaire from the text to make sure the person has really read it, and not just pressed the "next" button; the score could determine the weight). Without that, due to human nature, there might be way too many votes for sysvinit, because people are resistant to change and are unaware of its shortcomings.

Don Armstrong has just voted sysvinit as the primary init system (5 4 3 2 1), again putting systemd last, so they seem to have communicated beforehand.

From what I understand, he voted 5 and nothing else (he put equal marks between the others, so probably 2.5 points for each if the vote ends up counting; it could have been stated as 5 1=2=3=4 just as well, but it doesn't look as good a sequence).

I should have said, that he ranked sysvinit as his primary initsystem, which he did, even though FD was the first item of the list. Remember Debian CTTE uses a variant of the Condorcet voting system. A strong number two may win over a split number one, and by ranking them equal value, all options becomes "number two" option as I understand it. So it may not be carelessness that have made them both put sysvinit in as option number two.